72 



THE BATH ROAD 



liave an interest for the tourist who does not often 

 come upon their like. Hounslow's is just a common- 

 place ugliness. The curtailed remains of its once 

 numerous and extensive coaching inns are become, 

 as a rule, low pot-houses, in which labourers in tlie 

 market-gardens that practically surround the town, 

 sit and drink themselves stupid in the evening ; and 

 the business premises and 23rivate houses which alter- 

 nate along the highway are either shabby old places. 



COTTAGES, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE HAUNTS OF DICK TUKPIN. 



not old enougli to claim any interest on the score of 

 antiquity ; or of a pretentious bad taste rather more 

 difficult to bear with than the dirty hovels and 

 tumbledown cottages they have displaced. Here, 

 indeed, is the debateable ground between town and 

 country. Rurality is (appropriately enough) in its 

 last ditch, while civilization has established a pre- 

 carious outpost beside it. Flashy " villas " jostle the 

 market-gardeners' cottages ; and respectability sits self- 

 satisfied in its prim Early Victorian drawing-rooms. 



